


Rags of Light

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, IWTB, Season/Series 10 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:43:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5097836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dealing with the past to move into the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rags of Light

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the very patient @perplexistan who was looking for some post-IWTB angst. I hope this fits the bill! Thanks to @contradiction-to-nature, beta extraordinaire, and my squad sounding board.
> 
> The title comes from Leonard Cohen’s If It Be Your Will.

She finds Mulder behind the house, drowsing in one of the hammocks they’d strung between the ancient oaks that tower above their patch of the planet. Scully loves the clean piney air, the scents of earth and raw lumber that infuse their home. The trees are a riot of autumn color, carpeting the grass in gold and scarlet. Two floppy-eared Nubian goats are munching the grass nearby, occasionally crunching on fallen leaves. Scully named them Rosalind Franklin and Elizabeth Blackwell.

“Mmmmm,” Mulder says, stretching. “You’re home earlier than I expected.”

She gives the hammock a push. “Oh yeah? Were you going to get up and look busy after your nap?”

“Nope. I’m going to continue to look exhausted, which I am, because I have been busting my ass around here all day.” He grabs her waistband, trying to tug her into the hammock.

Scully twists away, triumphant. She slings her bag to the ground and sits in the Adirondack chair across from him. “Your chicken coop coming along?”

“It’s looking pretty good I think. Did you know you can get an artisanal chicken coop from Pottery Barn for like two thousand dollars?”

“Does it come with artisanal chickens?”

“No, they’re a separate accessory.” He rubs a hand over his stubbled face, shafts of sunlight highlighting the flecks of gray in his hair and beard.

Scully admires him, still devastating at forty-eight. His physique is thicker, more heavily muscled from years of manual labor. He wears a sweatshirt from the Rotarian pancake breakfast, his jeans riding low on narrow hips. Scully likes the scrape of his cheek against her made-up face, his calloused hands unbuttoning her silk blouses.

Mulder bats his lashes in the face of her scrutiny. His eyes are a deep mossy color in the late afternoon sunshine. “Stop objectifying me, dammit. I didn’t ask to look this fine.”

“You love being objectified.”

“You can use me however you want, baby.”

Scully twists her scarf in her hands. She’s nervous about this conversation, as though she’s telling her dad about the FBI all over again. “I need to talk to you about something, Mulder.”

He sits up, looking concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, no, nothing’s wrong.” She sees him relax, his shoulders loosening. “It’s just…I’m strongly considering applying to a residency program. Surgical.”

“Okay.” He still looks unsure, alert to her discomfort.

“It’s long,” she adds, talking fast. “Six years. Maybe shorter since I’m switching from another specialty.”

“What kind of surgery? Cardiac? Repairing all the hearts you break?” It’s an ongoing joke between them; Scully gets asked out by patients, by traditionalist colleagues who feel her bare ring finger constitutes an invitation.

She smiles weakly. “Craniofacial reconstruction.” She waits a beat. “In pediatrics.”

Something sharpens in his eyes. “Ah.”

She gives him an amused look. “That’s all you’ve got?”

He shrugs. “You know I support your career, Scully. Whatever you want, I’m good.”

“I’d eventually like to do a fellowship in microtia correction,” she adds. “My, uh, ten year plan I guess.”

Mulder squints. “What’s microtia?”

“Absent or abnormal development of the external ear.”

“Huh,” he says. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

She grins. “Not everyone has your spotless genetic makeup. I’d be in DC about three to four days a week, at Georgetown. I’m looking to see if I can reduce that by putting in time at Sorrows. Maybe work with some current and former patients.”

Mulder’s face closes. “Okay, well, we can get an apartment or something.” His voice is logical, reasonable. Devoid of interest or expression.

“What gives, Mulder? Why the lack of curiosity?” She’s hurt, deflated, but also intrigued by his distant affect.

He sighs, staring off into the watercolor sky. “I just wish you’d talk to someone.“

She shakes her head, tired of this. "Not everything goes back to William. It’s frankly insulting.”

“I don’t think everything comes back to William, and that’s not a fair accusation to make. But lately…I don’t know, Scully. I’m worried about you. You’re not sleeping, you’ve lost weight. And now this, essentially out of nowhere. Remember, I was a psychologist before I became the houseboy.”

“Mulder, you’re not the houseboy.” She knows he misses the daily intellectual challenge of his career but it’s no reason to start playing around in  _her_  head. “Come on, show me the chicken coop.”

His smile is gentle but his eyes are determined. “Not until you agree to talk to a professional. I’m worried about PTSD. It can take time to manifest, there can be unexpected triggers…Christian really got to you last year.”

Her laugh is sharp in the crisp air, startling a flock of sparrows to flight. “Of course you’d turn that into some Freudian melodrama. I can’t want a change, Mulder? I can’t discover a new passion?”

Mulder rests his forearms on his knees, gazing at her. ”You’ve still never talked to anyone about Emily either, have you?”

She stands, a cold fire rising in her. She feels betrayed, blindsided by his tenderness. “No, I haven’t. Nor do I intend to. I’m putting in my application for this residency, I’m sorry I bothered you with my hysterics.” She turns to walk to the house, but Mulder catches her sleeve.

“Scully, come on. Not like this.”

She whirls around, her hair swishing against her face. She’s trembling with anger. She thought this had ended with Christian, when she spoken her son’s name without a breath of resentment. But this? This is not to be endured. “Mulder, I will deal with what happened to my daughter and my son in my own way.” Scully feels her sinuses burn, her mouth filling with saliva. She will not cry about this again. She will  _not_.

“ _Your_  son?” he repeats. “He was mine too.”

She bores into him with a hard stare, watching his eyes. They’ve never done this, not really; only circled the edges of it like ballroom dancers on a floor strewn with broken glass. “Maybe so,” she whispers, with steely precision. “But you were never his father.”

Mulder’s face, the face she loves so much, registers pain. Shock.

“Oh, now it’s hard, right? When it’s not just about me?”

Mulder stands and casts a shadow over her. “I always -“

“You  _left us_ ,” she chokes. “Jesus, the doctor had barely cleared us and you were  _gone.”_

“I thought I was doing the best thing.” He strokes her hair, his eyes unfathomable.

“No,” she hisses, jerking away. “You don’t get to do that, Mulder. Your intentions don’t absolve you. You want to have this conversation after seven years then I will fucking have it. So here it is: you left me at the most vulnerable time in my life and it nearly undid me. I will always carry scars from that.”

“I know,” he murmurs, and in his voice is an echo of her own suffering, her own regrets. “How many more times do you need me to apologize?”

Scully shakes her head. “You don’t know, you don’t know anything. You don’t know what it felt like to pack his things up, things I’d spent ages selecting. You don’t know what it feels like to have your breasts aching with milk and no baby to nurse. You don’t know a single thing.”

“Tell me,” he whispers, almost inaudibly.

She doesn’t want to tell him this, she doesn’t want to remember the feeling of pain beyond pain. She doesn’t know if she’s telling him to hurt him or heal him. “I ran into a woman from Dr. Parenti’s office, a woman who had a little girl around the same time. And I had just…William, I had…anyway. Anyway. She had her baby with her and she…” Scully swallows hard, lets the breeze dry her eyes. “She asked about William and I said, I told her that he was, that he died.” The last word is little more than a breath.

Mulder stares at her, holds his arms out. “Scully…”

She backs away. “No, this is  _my_  pain. This is  _my_  tragedy, Mulder. You don’t get to share it, you weren’t there.”

“If you can’t share with me, then find someone. Please. If you’re going to apply to this program, you have to take care of yourself.” There are tears in his eyes and she knows if they touch her they will burn.

Scully walks past him, needing a reprieve from his knowing eyes. She goes to the goats and the black one, Rosalind, likes to be scratched behind the ears. Scully indulges her. “Who should I talk to, Mulder? Who specializes in affluent, well-educated women with family support who give away their children? Hmmm? You have a buddy from Oxford I can call?”

She hears Mulder’s footsteps in the grass and he’s next to her again, clicking his fingers to summon Elizabeth Blackwell. The goat nibbles corn from his palm with her funny lips. “You know it isn’t just William.”

Emily would be a sophomore this fall, William coming home on the bus from second grade, gap-toothed and grinning, telling his sister about dinosaurs and Pokemon. Scully feels faint.

“No,” she rasps. “Mulder, stop. Please don’t do this to me. I know you’re worried, but I am doing the best that I can. It was medical rape, it was murder…” She presses her face to her hands, squeezes her eyes against the white place, against her dead little girl.

“Scully, your best isn’t good enough. I’ve been living with ghosts since you worked with Christian, and that’s been a year now.“

She drops her hands. “I lived with your ghosts for decades and I never complained. Maybe you’re the one who needs to talk to somebody. This feels a lot like displacement, Doctor Mulder, so heal yourself before you start on me.”

He closes his eyes.

She stalks past him to her car. She gets in and drives away.

***

It’s easy to hide at the hospital, to grab a few hours of sleep in the call room, to sneak off for a cup of coffee when someone observes that Dr. Scully sure has been around a lot lately. She takes scalding showers and freezing ones, she runs until her legs are jelly and her throat is raw.

She submits everything for the residency application, excited and wishing she could share it with Mulder. This hasn’t broken them, there is too much between them for that, but she isn’t ready to hammer the dents out of her armor just yet.

The worst part is that Mulder isn’t wrong; she probably ought to talk to someone. But who? She’s a rape victim who wasn’t raped, she lost a child she never carried, she gave up a son she was terrified to lose. She’s been pared down to some essential core of herself and is afraid of letting anyone take away another sliver to biopsy.

Her phone rings and it’s Mulder, of course it’s Mulder.

"Hey,” he says. “Wanted to see if I need to get more Greek yogurt when I head to the store.”

She smiles, sad. “I need a couple of days. I need to figure out what I’m doing.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Okay.”

Silence for a time. She knows he’s pacing the kitchen, the living room, slouchy jeans and bare feet.

“Listen,” he says. “Scully, I stand by what I said but I didn’t mean to hurt you like that. I just need you to be okay.”

“I know,” she says.

“We’ve been through a lot. A lot of trauma, really, and I just…” He trails off, sighing.

Scully chews the inside of her cheek, imagines him running a frustrated hand through his hair.

“Look,” he continues. “I just think that you’re owed more than a half-healed wound for it. And you’re not getting help on your own.” The screen doors snaps in the background.

“Yeah, well, I do too. But Mulder, the world has no place for our trauma. And I need to figure out what to do with that. I understand your concern but it can’t manifest as control, as emotional blackmail.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a damn minute.” She hears anger in his voice now. “Emotional blackmail? What the fuck, Scully? You want to shut me out then give me hell for doing my best to make you get the support you need? Maybe you do need to take a few days.”

He hangs up and she heads to the gym to run and run without going anywhere.

***

She calls him two days later, but there’s no answer. “Hi, you’ve reached Fox Mulder. Are you sure this can’t be handled by e-mail?”

She hangs up, certain that it cannot.

***

Six days from home and she’s eating an apple cider donut at the nurses’ station.

“You moving in, Dana?” asks a nurse, stirring her coffee. “Gonna start charging you rent, babe.”

Scully blinks. “It’s complicated.”

“Yeah, it’s always complicated. But what are you going to do about it?”

Scully pauses, chewing. She doesn’t know, honestly. She’s done a very good job of keeping her body and her mind distracted for the past week, but that well of nepenthe will run dry soon. She pours herself a cup of coffee.

“I’m figuring that out. Hey, do you have that list of therapists for parents when they lose a child? I have someone who, ah, needs a referral.” She helps herself to a second donut.

The nurse passes her the list and she folds it up into a small rectangle, like a secret map that can help her get home.

***

In the three long weeks since she last saw Mulder, she’s had several appointments with Dr. Frey. He’s a good fit; he doesn’t press her and has expressed frank admiration that she’s managed to avoid catatonia. She’s learning to forgive Mulder. To forgive herself.

She spent an hour trying to decide on an outfit for tonight. Ultimately, as ever, she settled for good lingerie under basic black. Her hair hangs in loose waves, held out of her face by a pair of thick earmuffs

She parks her car at the base of the hill and hikes up the crunching grass. The weight of the duffle on her back makes her hunch forward, letting the wind slip down her collar. She shrugs the bag higher and her knees creak in protest.

He’s wrapped in a heavy blanket at the summit, his face canted to the stars. Before him is a small campfire, cheerful in the dark. “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,” quotes Mulder. The moon is hardly up to the task, being only a couple of days old and little more than an icy slice in the frozen sky.

She heaves her bag to the ground, next to the fleece-lined tarp he’s sitting on. “You didn’t think I’d come,” she huffs.

“I knew you’d come. You always come when I tell you the sky is going to fall.” He pats the ground next to him. “Warm yourself by this roaring blaze.”

She opens her bag and begins unpacking it. She pulls out a Thermos, a deck of cards, two Hershey bars, a box of graham crackers, and a bag of marshmallows.

“How’d you know I’d have a fire?”

Wordlessly, she adds a box of matches to the pile.

Mulder laughs. “Atta girl.”

She pulls out a Coleman sleeping bag, extra large, and dumps it beside him.

“Jeremiah was a bullfrog,” he sings. “Was a good friend of mine.”

An unexpected surge of delight flusters her and she fusses with the supplies to hide it. He remains the great love of her life, however unconventional both her love and her life may be. “Take those two sticks – no, the other one – so we can roast the marshmallows. I brought some coffee too.”

“Indian Guide approves of your camping preparedness this time around. C’mere, Scully.” His expression is roguish and it melts her as it always has.

Scully pulls the sleeping bag next to him and crawls in, unzipping it enough so that she can sit up. She unscrews the lid of the Thermos, filling it with boozy coffee. She passes Mulder the bottle, sloshing a little on his blanket and her good calfskin gloves.

He takes a swig, blinking in surprise. “Damn, Doc. Put a little coffee in your Bailey’s next time.”

“I’ll give you a saline IV tomorrow if you need it. Mulder, I’ve been seeing someone.”

Mulder blinks in surprise. “Pardon?”

“Oh…oh, no, professionally I mean. About William. And Emily.”

His smile warms her more deeply than the fire. “I’m glad,” he says. “But I’m sorry it was…the way it was.”

Scully shakes her head. “I needed it. You’ve always stirred me out of my complacency.”

“Isn’t that just a nice way of saying I drive you crazy?” He spears a marshmallow with his roasting stick.

“Yes, but Dr. Frey tells me I need to improve my communication skills.”

Mulder chuckles. He holds his marshmallow over the fire, rotating it gently above the flames until it develops an even tan crust.

She prefers them set alight and carbonized on the outside. “Mulder,” she begins, preparing graham crackers and chocolate for him. “Are we okay?

He looks puzzled, assembles his s’more. “We’re always okay. We just have low points. It’s a process, right?” He licks marshmallow from his fingers.

“I’m afraid of the low points. I don’t know how to roll with things.” Dr. Frey has also been helping her vocalize her fears. She is proud of herself and sees surprise on Mulder’s face.

“Even at our lowest we’re pretty great, Scully.” He takes another sip of his coffee. “You roll better than you think. Stop being so hard on yourself. Given everything that’s happened, it’s impressive that we’re still mostly sane.”

“The world is too much with us,” she quotes, leaning against his arm. She loves the scent of him, the indefinable essence she sought from his empty things when she carried his son in her belly.

Mulder unfurls his cocoon to crawl behind her. He arranges her between his knees, the blanket over both of them. Then he unzips the sleeping bag, tucking it around her. Goosebumps rise over her body when his chin nestles against her cheek. It’s so easy to forget things aren’t always this simple between them.

He holds his s’more to her mouth and she takes a bite for the giddy pleasure of tasting his fingers. “S’good,” she mumbles stickily.

“Thanks,” he murmurs into her hair. She knows he has a thing for her hair. He has a thing for buttoned up suits with unbuttoned blouses he can look down. He has a thing for intellectual foreplay, for the click of high heels and of a round being chambered in her Glock. He likes her lab coat and stethoscope.

The fire crackles. “Do you think William’s out tonight, Mulder?”

He tightens his arms. “Probably. They’ve been saying this is supposed to be one of the best years for the Leonid. Eight’s a good age for that kind of thing.”

Their baby is eight. She burrows in tighter, head lolling against his chest. Mulder’s breath stirs the tiny hairs on her forehead. The susurrus of his heart, his breathing, steadies her and she wishes she were more like him. More accepting of her place in the scope of creation. Mulder, perhaps due to his quixotic notions, is a far more tranquil creature than she.

“I still want to do this residency,” she says. “Are you okay with it?”

“I love you,” he replies, gazing at her beneath the starlight. The night is timeless; it could be any one of hundreds they’ve spent together. Scully marvels for the thousandth time at the way his bottom lip is grooved to hold the top, thinking of the way active sites on enzymes allow them to catalyze reactions. Just you and me, Mulder, she thinks. We’re the destination and also the journey.

The meteor shower begins, dreamy trails across the night sky as she stares in rapture at the universe. Mulder’s arms are about her as they huddle close, two lighthouse keepers at the edge of the galaxy.


End file.
